The
polls don’t look that great for Romney at this time. A couple of polls
have Obama up five points. I don’t understand how President Obama’s
approval rating is around 42 percent and yet 49 percent of voters say
they’re going to vote for him again.

I suspect that there are people who disapprove of Obama and Romney
and won’t vote for anybody in November. Some are disenchanted Democrats
and Republicans. Of course, there are the Libertarians, followers of Ron
Paul, and Constitution Party supporters who most likely did not vote in
2008 so their non-votes don’t mean much since they’ve already been
factored in. Or is it out?

I got an email today from someone who’s going to vote for the Constitution Party candidate. Here’s what he wrote:

“I say no to the ‘lesser of two evils.’ I
am voting for the Constitution Party and only the Constitution Party.
Calling me an idiot does not intimidate me. Romney/Obama [are] all the
same to me. Remember the Republican Party was a third party when they
put a man in the White House. Let Obama win. Let Romney win. Either way
America loses.”

What has the Constitution Party done since it was established in
1991? No seats in the Senate or House of Representatives. No
governorships. No state upper houses. No state lower houses. If a third
party is going ot be successful, it would help if it had some successes.

Polls can be used to dampen voter enthusiasm. People see a poll
showing Obama ahead when the economy is in the toilet and wonder how
it’s possible. Why bother voting since the election is over . . . in
September!

I wouldn’t be surprised that the poll numbers are being screwed with. There’s just no way to prove it.

A little history might help showing how polls at this point in an
election are not necessarily indicators of who’s going to win in
November.

Gallup shows that Obama is leading Mitt Romney by 4 points after the
DNC Convention. Consider that in the 1980 election Gallup showed that
Jimmy Carter was leading Ronald Reagan by 4 points in mid September. In
October Carter was up 8 by points. Going into the last two weeks before
the election, Gallup published a poll showing Carter up six among likely
voters.

Ronald Reagan ended up winning by 9 points and taking 44 states in
the electoral count — 489 to 49. Third party candidate John Anderson got
6.6% of the vote and made no impact on the final results.

The most lopsided polling spread after the Democratic National
Convention has to be the 1988 election between George H. W. Bush and
Michael Dukakis. A Gallup Poll had Dukakis up by 17 percent — 55 to 38
percent. A four-point difference is nearly a tie in statistical analysis
of polls. It’s within the margin of error. Breitbart reports that The New York Times stated the following from July 26, 1988:

“This was among the findings of a national public opinion poll of 948 registered voters conducted late last week for Newsweek magazine by the Gallup Organization. The telephone interviews took
place on July 21, which was the last night of the convention, and on the
night after that.

Fifty-five percent of the 948 registered
voters interviewed in the poll said they preferred to see Mr. Dukakis
win the 1988 Presidential election, while 38 percent said they preferred
to see Mr. Bush win.

In the end, the enthusiasm factor will determine who wins. Which
party will crawl over broken glass to vote? Let’s hope it’s the
Republicans.

I don't know about poll laws, but there are correct and incorrect ways to do polls, and the percentage of possible error is ONE thing that must be given to get any real sense of the poll. At best, polls are turkey shoots.